Contract work in the UK – a guide for non-residents

If you’re a non-UK national or expat and want to spend some time living and working here, contract work could be the way to accomplish your goals. This is especially true if you work in the engineering, IT, healthcare or creative industries, which have reported skill gaps in several important areas.

Why you might want to work in the UK

Broaden your vocational skills

Access to facilities and markets not available in your home country, especially if you have a technical background and work in IT, telecoms, engineering, oil or gas/energy.

Higher standard of living and ability to send savings home

NOTE: The impact of Brexit has yet to make itself known for overseas contractors and expats so bear in mind that all information written here is subject to change and that you should engage the counsel of a good immigration lawyer before making any major life changes.

In order to successfully navigate the UK’s immigration laws you will need:

Substantial savings

Sponsorship from a supportive UK national/institution

A valid visa.

Visas

There are two main Visas that could grant you access to the UK: Tier 1 (high value) worker visa or Tier 2 (general) skilled worker visa.

Tier 1
If your contracting business is already established or you’re sitting on a great idea, you could qualify under the entrepreneur, graduate entrepreneur or investment strands.

Entrepreneur visa
If you want to run a business in the UK, you must have access to £50,000 in investment funds to qualify for this visa, plus application fees of around £1,000 (they vary depending on your location) and healthcare surcharges. The application and healthcare fees must also be paid for each family member you wish to bring over. With this visa, you can stay up to a maximum of 3 years and 4 months but you can apply for extensions and then an indefinite leave to remain after 5 years.

Graduate entrepreneur visa
If you’re a graduate who’s been endorsed by either the Department for International Trade or an authorised UK higher education institution, you can apply for a graduate entrepreneur visa. Your application will be around £360 per person and you will also have to pay health surcharges for each family member coming with you. This visa allows you to stay in the UK for 1 year but you can’t apply for leave to remain afterwards.

Investment visaIf you have £2 million to invest in the UK, you can apply for this visa, under the same fee structure as the entrepreneur visa.

Tier 2 visa

This is the most commonly applied-for visa. You can apply if you’ve been offered a secure contract in the UK and you live outside European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland.

For this type of visa you need to have an licensed sponsor.

If you’re applying for up to 3 years, you will be paying application fees that can range from £600 to over £1,000, depending on your location and method of application. You will need to pay identical fees for each family member you wish to bring with you.

Healthcare surcharge
This will apply to you no matter what visa you apply for (although there are exceptions) and breaks down as follows:

Student visa: £150 per yearAll other visas: £200 per year

Finding your nicheThe best way to secure a visa is to run a business that fills a skills gap in the UK marketplace.

You can take a look at the UK skills shortage list to work out if your contracting work is especially in demand. If it’s not, then you might want to consider refocusing/retraining so that you stand a better chance of securing a sponsor.

Keep checking the list as shortages do change and fluctuate. It’s also a good idea to make a habit of reading the financial section of British news so that you have a clear idea of market trends in your industry.

As always, make sure you consult your immigration advisor for the most up-to-date information and expertise. Good luck – we’ll be excited to welcome you!

Privacy Notice

Contractor Supermarket Limited Limited (hereafter called Contractor Supermarket Limited) respects your privacy and will process your data in a fair and lawful way. This privacy notice outlines the way in which Contractor Supermarket Limited collects, processes and shares your data and how long we retain it for.

Where we get our data from We will received your data from:
Directly from you via phone, email or on our website; Introducers; Suppliers; Analytics providers; Advertising networks; Search information providers; Companies house; Electoral register; Land registry and Other publicly available sources.

What we use the information forWe will use the data for:
Providing you with the services that you have requested from ourselves; Marketing and market research; Fraud prevention and processing payments to third parties.

Contractor Supermarket Limited may from time to time use aggregated, or redacted data for any purpose. Although this comes from your personal data it is not considered personal data, as it does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity, and we are free to use this at any time.

Legal basis for processing data

Contractor Supermarket Limited will process personal data for the purposes already stated on one or more of the following legal basis:

Consent – you have consented to us using your personal data by adding your details to our website and reading this privacy notice. You can withdraw consent at any time by directing an email to [email protected];

Contractual obligation– It is necessary for us to process your data to perform the contract between Contractor Supermarket Limited and yourself, or to take any necessary steps at your request prior to entering into this contract;

Legal obligations – we may need to process data in order to fulfil Legal obligations for example audit purposes;

Legitimate interests – we may use your personal data to operate, promote or improve our services or use your data for analytics or in order to protect our business.

Contractor Supermarket Limited will use your data for the purpose for which it was collected, unless we consider that we reasonably need to use it for another reason, if that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we would like to use your data for any other purposes we will notify you and provide explanation as to the legal basis under which we will be able to use your data.

Data retention
Contractor Supermarket Limited will only keep your data:
As long as necessary to fulfil our contractual obligations or As long as necessary to fulfil legal and regulatory obligations

Contractor Supermarket Limited will determine the length of time we can keep your data by considering the above and:

Potential risk from unauthorised use or disclosure; the purposes for which we process your data and If we can achieve the same results some other way without requiring your data

We may anonymise your data allowing us to retain for as long as we wish as it can no longer be associated to yourself.

Transfer of data
Contractor Supermarket Limited ensure that there are adequate jurisdictional data protection regulations in place should your data be transferred outside of the EEA(you will be informed if this is necessary), Your data is currently stored inside the EEA and Contractor Supermarket Limited have data protection policies, procedures and safeguards in place to protect the security of your data.

Your rights You have the right:

To be informed– we will tell you when we collect data what we are going to do with it, primarily through this privacy notice;

Of access – you can contact Contractor Supermarket Limited in righting to request the information that we hold about you;

To Erasure – you can ask for your information to be deleted( this is not an absolute right and will depend on any legal restrictions) We will keep a list of your wish to be deleted to ensure you do not end up in our database again at any future time;

To rectification – you can ask for any information to be amended if it is inaccurate or incomplete;

To restrict processing – tells us to stop processing your data but allows us to keep hold of it for other agreed purposes;

To data portability – to transfer information to another business at your request (most used for instance such as changing bank accounts);

To object – to use of your data for marketing and profiling for marketing purposes. Our Legitimate interests do not outweigh your rights and freedoms, therefore you can cease us processing based on our legitimate interests;

To withdraw consent – you may withdraw consent to the processing of your data at any time, you can withdraw this consent by emailing or calling the following: [email protected], +353 71 932 0877;

To complain – if Contractor Supermarket Limited do not satisfactorily deal with your complaint you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Data Security
Contractor Supermarket Limited take data protection responsibilities very seriously and have ensured that your data is treated fairly, lawfully and with the respect it deserves. Contractor Supermarket Limited have took adequate measures to protect your data from being accidently lost, used, accessed or disclosed in any way that has not been authorised . We have these procedures in place to prevent breaches, however we shall inform you and the relevant regulatory bodies should any data breach occur.